CEOs ready to spend money on mobility

CEOs are ready to spend money, and mobility is one of their IT-related spending priorities, according to a survey of 410 CEOs and senior executives by research firm Gartner.

Senior execs are "bullish" on technology-related business growth this year and next, and they are ready to invest in long-term growth, the survey finds. Other IT-related spending priorities include cloud, big data and social media.

Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner fellow, advises CEOs: "Make the tough choices. Be prepared to cut back in areas that represent the old predigital ways of doing business. But maintain a coherent and integrated view of the investment being made. Don't allow too much fragmentation across sales, marketing, digital, IT and other budgets to obscure the view and reduce directional control."

At the same time, CEOs and senior execs "are lagging behind in their understanding of what digital business means, and the disruptions that are only slightly ahead of them," says Raskino. The CIO will need to handle this understanding "gap" over the next couple of years by educating the board, as well as senior and middle management, about the importance of digital business to the bottom line. "Expecting the CIO to be the prime mover in digital is a fairly sudden and major change of expectation and emphasis," says Raskino.

On the positive side, close to half of CEOs have hired or plan to hire a chief digital officer or other digital leaders by the end of 2015.

Optimism was also found in a quarterly survey of 122 CEOs by the Business Roundtable released last month. The survey of CEOs found that they plan to increase hiring and capital spending over the next six months, Reuters reports.

A strong 48 percent of CEOs plan to increase capital spending in the next six months; this compares to only 39 percent in the previous survey.